Microsoft to purge Bing search engine user data

Microsoft to purge Bing search engine user data

Under pressure from a European Union advisory committee concerned about Internet privacy, Microsoft has agreed to eliminate all user data collected via its search engine, Bing, after six months.

The company said it would delete IP addresses connected to search queries at the six-month mark, and after 18 months eliminate cookies and other types of search identifiers that help improve the accuracy of future searches.

Europe is the global leader in Internet searches, with 32% of all queries compared with Asia-Pacific at 31% and North America at 22%. Bing commands only 2% of all search queries in Europe, compared with Google's 80%, according to comScore.